The beauty in black metal is its ability to transport the listener away for the better part of an hour.  It's not so much about what's happening at the moment, or across the span of five minutes: it's about the world we can't escape.  Time keeps us tethered to this mortal coil and black metal asks us to look around.  While much of the genre is still steeped in the Satanist or Satan-adjacent imagery it blossomed with, over the past two decades it has moved into much more pagan territory.  Who needs to escape to Satan, when the escape is just outside the windows of our tomb-like apartments? And you know who can't escape Satan?  Witches.  Witches always find their way back to Satan, and even if the closest they get is making poultice from  mandrake root and mugworts, there's always somebody who wants to hang you. And WITCHER, a two-person atmospheric black metal band from Hungary, is here to provide the soundtrack for the falsely accused (and those who successfully dabble in the dark arts, as well.)

And while Lélekharang, ("Soul Bell" in Hungarian) is very much about a witch on his or her way to the gallows pole, it's also very steeped in its sense of place.  The album boasts lyrics in Hungarian with English translations.  It's not hard to see the deathly fog drifting over the flood plains of the Carpathian Basin, as some poor soul is led to their untimely demise.  The guitars of Neubauer Roland are awash with reverb and tremolo-picked somberness, and the programmed beats create an ambient soundtrack to our lives flashing before our eyes (at least if you're a witch). Across the album, Gere Karola adds simple, '80s horror film inspired keyboards that float in and out of the sonic energy produced by the couple.  The vocals are sometimes heavily affected, buried underneath effects that sometimes feel like they've been lifted from a Daft Punk album.  Writing all of this makes it sounds like this combination would be impossible to mix, but WITCHER has no problem making it work.

The first song of the album is a simple solo piano piece: a somber exploration in a minor-key, with keys that come in to support the sadness of the melody. Later on, plucked strings give it a chamber-like feel.  It's the acoustic equivalent of what's to come.  None of the songs on Lélekharang are particularly flashy.  They're attractive melodies played over three or four chord progressions.  Sometimes these melodies are carried by the guitars; most of the time, the keyboards take over and build on the foundation.  The album's centerpiece is the title track "Lélekharang",  a ten-minute exploration of creating an uber-Hungarian sense of time and place. High-pitched, shrill bells ring out over a slow, expansive tremolo-picked blast of blackened chords. The song transitions to another motif as the keyboards lead the way, and the pace quickens. "I find peace on my cross," pleads Karola in her pained, impassioned growls. "I bow to the ancestors.  Bells toll for me." The song paints with a palette of blackened colors, a morbid portrait of a witch destined for execution. While the sounds on this and the other songs are not ground-breaking, the addition of the keys and the vocal effects make WITCHER carve out its own little niche in the atmospheric black metal ecosystem.

While the last song- a cover of Beethooven's Moonlight Sonata- raises some eyebrows in terms of the creative decision-making, overall Lélekharang is a strong contribution to the legacy of atmospheric black metal.  In addition, it's one of those albums that grows on you, much like the cyst on the back of my head: the skin tightens, it becomes inflamed and you want to show everybody to see if it's okay.  (It is.  The antibiotics are doing their thang.)  It kept me company on a few early morning walks, and hearing this wash of Hungarian metal as I looked at the sun peeking through a copse of bald cypress and white oaks, made my feet feel firmly grounded in the pagan land of this place we call Earth.